Tag Archives: Websites

MAXFAS Exoskeleton: Human Fire Control Supports against Fatigue

2015/08/23

Remember Drake and Vasquez’ smart guns from Aliens, or the surgically invasive exoskeletal hardware from Elysium? As opposed to ghost rings, reflex sights or lasers, they provided a passive targeting system to increase the accuracy of their operators, and decreased their battle weariness. In case of the Smart Gun, the fluff said that it had a guided mode – making it an ambulatory equivalent to the Remote Sentries from the Special Edition that were completely unmanned. And the harness and gyro-stabilized mount for the gun (and the camera it was designed for) made for a stable firing platform.

Seems we’re ‘aiming’ at active auto targeting for the warfighters of the future. Based on the same type of strap-on physical therapy devices used to treat stroke victims and sufferers of Traumatic brain Injury, the MAXFAS is less exoskeletal suit and more of an automatic traction system that stabilizes and prevents the muscular tremors in tired hands and arms from throwing off the operator’s aim.

MAXFAS exoskeleton: making Duck Hunt way too easy a game.

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Renowned Scientists Warn Against Killer Robots

2015/08/18

“Military Artificial Intelligence Arms Race Could Soon Develop if Preventative Measures are not Taken.”

Many people don’t realize that (as far as we know) the current generation of Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are in fact, flown by rated pilots; only by a (hopefully) secure data link from several hundred miles away. Flesh and blood hands still pickle the bombs and missiles off those drones. Interruption of that data link or some other sort of fault triggers a return to base order; some of the only real automation on the current series of UCAVs.

MQ-9 Reaper armed with AGM-114 Hellfires and Small Diameter Bombs

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MK2 Megabot vs Kuratas in Upcoming Solaris-Style Battle

2015/08/11

ONE SHALL STAND, ONE SHALL FALL…

After their unsuccessful Kickstarter in October of last year, the Oakland California-based MegaBots Inc. seems to have done the best thing they could do to stay active in the public arena. They picked a fight.

In late June via video, Andrew Stroup and Gui Cavalcanti challenged Suidobiashi Heavy Industries to a duel- A batchall, if you will, to fight against Suidobiashi’s current combat mecha- Kuratas. Neither Stoup nor Cavalcanti are unfamiliar with either engineering competitions nor high media exposure. Both appeared in the 2012 Discovery Channel reality show: The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius.

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Robogames Video Series: BattleBots of the 21st Century

2014/12/11

I’m sure most of you at least remember that there was a pair of Robot arena combat shows in the latter half of the 1990s called Battle Bots and Robot Wars. Each week, a number of amateur and professional propellerheads would get together to do battle within one of three weight classes. The shows were on the air for several seasons; and was pretty popular, spawning how-to books, video games, and other marketing tie-ins. Even Mythbusters alumni Jaime Hyneman and Grant Imahara competed.

Photo by Dave Schumacher

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Lockheed Martin: One Hundred Megawatt Fusion Engine within Ten Years?

2014/12/07

On October 15th, Aviation Week received exclusive access to Lockheed Martin’s Revolutionary Technology Programs unit; specifically regarding a new Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR) program lead by Aeronautical Engineer Thomas McGuire. McGuire and his team make a claim that uses a lot of phrases like “holy grail” and paradigm-shifting. How compact? The containment vessel in test unit is said to be roughly the equivalent of a business jet engine. “I studied this in graduate school where, under a NASA study, I was charged with how we could get to Mars quickly,” McGuire said in the article.

If true, this may ultimately be the answer to planetary energy needs within twenty years. With the initial testbed dimensions expected to just about fit on a truck bed. I know its larger and probably of too high an output to compare to, say a CoreTek 275 XL engine, but can power a small city of 100,000 people all by itself at one hundred megawatts. And this is just a working testbed due within the decade. This isn’t some guy tinkering in his garage in his spare time either, this is the Skunkworks; Lockheed Martin’s go-to gang of whizkids.

Compact Fusion Reactor cross-section. Pretty much looks the way I remember their BattleTech equivalents work.

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New Interactive BattleTech Star Chart

2014/10/12

In September, MechFactory released a new and improved iteration of their ISCP, or Inner Sphere Cartography Project. This was announced on their main page which includes an overview of its changes.

For more we asked MechFactory’s owner, Pheonix Wolf about the changes:

BobTheZombie: How and when did this project get started?

Phoenix Wolf: An early idea to create an interactive stellar map of all known BattleTech worlds appeared around 2001. That time we had only a deprecated 16 bit program and a text file with coordinates for 3025-era planets. I thought that a better, usable internet-based map would be a great tool for BattleTech players – especially for those people, who –like my team- are playing BattleTech RPG (MechWarrior was the name at that time). I took the data and began building the first mapping system on php/javascript basis.

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Review of Star Traders 4X: Empire in Exile

2014/07/16

Having mainly missed PC gaming in the ’90s (with a few exceptions) I only recently discovered the 4X empire-building sub genre. According to the Wikipedia entry, 4X is described as: “a genre of strategy-based video and board games in which players control an empire and “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”. The term was first coined by Alan Emrich in his September 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World. Since then, others have adopted the term to describe games of similar scope and design.”

Empires in Exile, like Star Traders RPG before it, is a 2D grid-based game set in space. Unlike RPG where you navigate established shipping lanes and take jobs or explored colonized or surveyed worlds, this time you are the hand that establishes and guides an empire of your own. It seems similar in scope and concept to BattleTech’s Interstellar Operations, if it were played during the Star League era since you are essentially the Star Lord. Different factions within your empire quarrel, sometimes with trade restrictions or clandestine operations. And sometimes with open warfare. Either way, it’s in your interest to quell the problems at home while expanding your empire.

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Interactive BattleTech Star Chart

2014/01/27

Once again Reddit has provided a source of fan-based ingenuity and useful content. Cryp71c is in production on a fully interactive Inner Sphere through deep periphery star chart that, among many other things will show political affiliation of each known planet in the BattleTech universe across THIRTY separate time periods.

As mind-bogglingly vast as the BattleTech universe is, let’s just say I’m highly impressed by this undertaking. Already, the site uses mouse and certain keyboard inputs to pan and zoom, and cursor rollovers reveal the system’s name. Future updates will include canon planetary descriptions, gravity, moons, atmospheric data, USIIR ratings, known jump points, system history; even available terrain features with a single click.

The Inner Sphere: The Not-So Final Frontier…

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